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Friday, March 29th, 2024  
Sharon Jones

Apr 13, 2010 Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings

Sharon Jones is no stranger to struggle, be it familial, financial, or professional. However, at 54 years old, the soul singer is unfazed by the task of rehashing some of her difficult life lessons. “Struggle should make you a better person. I don’t want to become a nasty person; I don’t want to do something evil,” she says. Not that anyone who heard her music would expect Jones’ warmhearted outlook to translate to wilting flower. “I’m not biting my tongue. I’m not going to have someone talk to me or mistreat me in any way. I’ve taken enough crap. Ive learned the hard way!she says with a laugh, referencing the title of her fourth album, I Learned the Hard Way. More

The Drums: In the Studio

Apr 05, 2010 Web Exclusive

The Most Anticipated Albums of 2010 section in Under the Radar‘s Winter 2010 Issue includes a short article on The Drums’ debut album. Here is the full Q&A of that interview with the band. I caught up with Brooklyn via Florida act The Drums in mid-January at their East Williamsburg apartment, somewhere between the moribund Marcy projects and the urbane bastion of hipness that is Bedford Avenue. Apropos, given that the band seem like misfits in today’s Brooklyn scene, their insular milieu wedged somewhere between such somber Factory Records acts as The Wake and blithe ‘50s surf culture dreams. More

Chloë Grace Moretz

Apr 05, 2010 Issue #32 - Summer 2010 - Wasted on the Youth

“I still have an obsession with my bunny,” admits 13-year-old actress Chloë Grace Moretz. “I can’t sleep without it, and every time I travel, I go with my bunny. It’s a stuffed bunny, it’s a fake bunny, but it’s my favorite thing in the world, basically.” More

Joanna Newsom

Apr 04, 2010 Issue #31 - Spring 2010 - Joanna Newsom

When Joanna Newsom was in her early teens, the young harpist thought that she might want to become a solo classical performer. Although the Northern California native began to understand by age 17 that she would rather study composition than performance, her mother took her on a trip to several conservatories across the country during her senior year in high school to audition for admittance, an experience Newsom remembers as terrifying. Most intimidating was her audition for renowned classical harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, the head of the harp department at the prestigious Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. More

Gayngs

Apr 03, 2010 Gayngs

Sometimes inspiration has to doggedly chip away at those who refuse its presence until the light bulb finally brightens. More

Club 8

Apr 03, 2010 Issue #31 - Spring 2010 - Joanna Newsom

Immersing yourself in a new culture can be a time of discovery—new food, new friends, new language—and for Karolina Komstedt (vocals) and Johan Angergård (guitar, synths) of Club 8, new inspiration. Leaving home became unexpectedly crucial to the creative process of their seventh album The People’s Record, a project whose origins began in 2008, during a rare Club 8 international tour that brought the Swedish pop duo to Brazil for the first time.


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Caribou

Apr 03, 2010 Issue #31 - Spring 2010 - Joanna Newsom

Though the last 10 years have done much to erode the stylistic divide between dance music and the innumerable rock and pop variants, the perception persists that music made for dance floors isn’t quite as serious or thoughtful as music written for headphones. Lyrics, after all, are secondary in dance music; often they’re the dressing for arrangements designed to bypass your brain and go straight to your body. And despite the fact that Caribous Dan Snaith started out making dance music, the sort patented by IDM superstars Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin more than anything crafted specifically for the dance floor, he spent the majority of the last decade carefully honing his skills as a bedroom pop auteur, building dazzling towers of sound out of gorgeously cascading melodies, thundering avalanches of drums, and softly unfurling vocals. Having taken his brand of pocket psychedelia to its logical conclusion with 2007’ s Andorra, Snaith has now returned to his beat-making roots with Swim, this time aiming to both move the pulse of the club with his experimental grooves and capture minds with lyrics about divorce, old age, and loneliness. More

Pavement

Apr 02, 2010 Issue #31 - Spring 2010 - Joanna Newsom

Tell someone under the age of 30 who loves indie rock that you saw Pavement live, and they’ll likely react hysterically. More

School of Seven Bells: In the Studio

Mar 31, 2010 School of Seven Bells

The Most Anticipated Albums of 2010 section in Under the Radar‘s Winter 2010 Issue includes a short article on School of Seven Bells’ new album. Here is the full Q&A of that interview with Alejandra Deheza. In preparing the follow-up to its 2008 full-length debut Alpinisms, a vibrant collection of dreampop harmonies, shoegaze guitars and synthetic tribal beats, Brooklyn trio School of Seven Bells didn’t plan to change its recording process all that much. Yet, vocalist/guitarist Alejandra Deheza contends that the band’s forthcoming sophomore album Disconnect From Desire is a departure from its predecessor, simply because the music and lyrics come from a different time and place. “I love Alpinisms, but I definitely think this is a way better record,” she says. More